Daily Times

PESHAWAR: The Water Governance of the FATA (Environment Cell) Project in collaboration with the IUCN Pakistan and the Planning & Development Department FATA, celebrated the International Day of Forests and the World Water Day at the FATA Secretariat here.

Both days were celebrated through interactive sessions with the relevant stakeholders as per this year’s themes of the days. The celebration events were structured so as to create maximum awareness about the thematic topics and motivate the same for taking appropriate actions at the institutional and the individual levels. A large number of participants from the line departments of FATA attended the sessions.

The International Day of Forests was celebrated on March 21. The theme of the year was “Forests and Energy” and the discussions about the International Day of Forests focused on the role of forests as nature’s power houses for meeting the society’s energy needs in addition to their other ecosystem functions.

The topic had particular relevance in the context of FATA as the majority of its population lives in rural areas and biomass is the major source of energy throughout FATA. Woody Biomass is used not only in residential areas for cooking, space heating and other utility functions, but most of the rural businesses and enterprises and institutional premises, also depend on wood as a source of energy.

The session highlighted the need for planting more trees in FATA based on the availability and suitability of vast chunks of land in FATA, and the role of trees in tackling climate change; mitigation and adaptation; biodiversity conservation; watershed protection; employment generation and livelihood improvement.

It was also resolved by the participants that the FATA Forestry Sector would register itself under the Bonn Challenge – a global initiative committed to restore 150 million hectares of the planet’s deforested and degraded lands by 2020, and 350 million hectares by 2030.

The World Water Day was celebrated at the FATA Secretariat. The theme of the day was “Why Waste Water”. The World Water Day participants included government officials from the irrigation sector, agriculture and the livestock sector, the public health engineering sector and relevant stakeholders from the forestry sector and representatives of the Planning and Development Department, FATA.

Given the arid and semi-arid characteristic of FATA, water is of critical importance in the area. The issue has attained increased significance in FATA in the face of the climate change. The discussions also took stock of the water, use, and protection and management issues in FATA with special reference to the IUCN Study on “Water Challenges and Water Governance in FATA”. It was highlighted that currently in FATA the underground water was being over-harvested, while the surface water is being under-utilised and gets wasted through run-off.